Labour Market Performance Research Articles

Linguistic Proximity and the Labour Market Performance of Immigrant Men in Canada

AbstractThe ability to speak the language of the destination country plays a key role in the labour market performance of immigrants. To assess the influence of language on economic assimilation, we combine large samples of the restricted version of the Canadian Census (1991–2006) with both a measure of proximity to English of the most used language in the immigrant’s country of origin, and information about wages and the occupational skills required for the jobs immigrant men hold. Immigrant men whose language is more distant from English earn lower wages and work in jobs requiring more physical strength and fewer social and analytical skills, than the jobs of similar native‐born workers. More importantly, linguistic distance imposes a relatively larger wage penalty on college‐educated upon entry into the country than on non‐college educated individuals. However, both the wage and the analytical skill requirements of the jobs held by college‐educated immigrant men from linguistically distant countries increase markedly with time in the country, while their physical strength requirements decline moderately. Our analysis suggests that facilitating language acquisition may speed up the labour market assimilation of immigrant men in Canada.

Knocking on employment’s door: internships and job attainment

Undergraduate internships have gained popularity among students, universities, governments and firms since the creation of the European Higher Education Area. However, empirical research on the relationship between internships and labour market performance of graduates is still scarce, particularly in Spain. This paper examines whether internships improve job attainment in the short run (first employment after graduation) and in the medium/long term (employment 4 years later). We use the first Spanish University Graduate Job Placement Survey (2014) to estimate linear probability models and probit models. A novel econometric technique is also implemented to evaluate the sensitivity of our findings to omitted variable bias. We disentangle the internship effect on (i) the time it takes to find the first job; (ii) the vertical, horizontal and skills matching with the first job; (iii) being employed in the medium/long term; (iv) the vertical and horizontal matching with the current employment; and (v) wage quintiles of the current job. Our results show that internship experience facilitates the university-to-work transition for Spanish graduates. Although the effects of internships on being employed do not vanish in the medium/long term, there is weak evidence of positive effects on matching four years after graduation and no effects are found on wages.

HOW MISSISSIPPI’S LABOR MARKET, ECONOMY, AND FUNDING IMPACT PRISON UNDERSTAFFING

Understaffing is a problem within the Mississippi Department of Corrections, but Mississippi’s poor labor market, struggling economy, and deficient budget do not currently support the needs of the Mississippi Department of Corrections and demonstrate factors which limit the agency’s abilities to adequately staff its facilities. First, the state of Mississippi’s labor market performance ranks 48th overall among the 50 states and its unemployment rate was 5.8%, ranked 45th among the 50 states. Reservation wage represents an important factor in analyzing Mississippi’s labor market and the reported hourly wage for correctional officers was $13.88. This same wage is provided to arguably safer occupations than working as a correctional officer making it difficult to persuade labor force participants to accept offers in such a dangerous occupation. Mississippi reports a 36% annual turnover in correctional staffing representing struggles in retaining the staff currently in place. The Mississippi Department of Corrections will continue struggling to compete with other low-wage occupations until they can offer competitive wages. Second, Mississippi’s economy also ranked 48th among the 50 states. Since 2010, Mississippi’s population only grew 0.6% and its per capita income sat at about 70% of the national figure. Many of Mississippi’s prisons are built in struggling non-metropolitan areas limiting the pool of residents from which to hire. Improving staffing turns on working within the means of the state’s economic statistics and finding ways to improve the economy. Finally, Mississippi cut the MDOC’s budget by $215 million over the past six years. Funding is necessary to properly manage and operate a prison. The MDOC is not an industry which maintains any control over its own population and thus the more prisoners being housed, the more staff is needed, and the more funding required. Potential solutions to the understaffing issue exist, such as closing facilities, releasing prisoners, learning from what other states implement, and reconsidering funding. There is an opportunity for Mississippi to get ahead of this issue and address it before the problem is placed in the court’s hands or the state will have little to no say in how this issue is corrected.

Exploring the Labor Market Consequences of Psychiatric Disorders: An Event Study Approach

Vast literature documents a negative association between mental disorders and labor market performance but it is challenging to find a research design that could provide an reliable estimate for an effect. This paper provides new evidence on the immediate labor market consequences following the first psychiatric admission using the event study framework. To reduce selection bias, I exploit variation in the timing of the first psychiatric admission to estimate the effect of the first psychiatric treatment on labor market performance. Using Finnish administrative data, I find that the first psychiatric admission leads to loss in earned income of about €1700 (10%). However, but to a large extent the empirical analyses demonstrate decreasing pre-trends in labor market outcomes before the event year, thus signaling problems related to endogeneity. Anxiety disorders provide a notable exception by exhibiting pre-event labor market trajectories for which parallel trends assumption cannot be ruled out. This study provides evidence that research designs that use timing variation in the first health may produce very modest pre-trends also in relationships typically considered endogenous.

Labour market performance of young migrant workers with heterogeneous educational trajectories in China

Successful global cities present a spectrum of development strategies but share the benefit of the reciprocal dynamics between tailored education systems and matching labour markets. This paper examines burgeoning cities in China and investigates the effects of the heterogeneous educational trajectories of young migrant workers in urban China on their labour market performance. Drawing on the National Migrant Dynamics Monitoring Survey, this paper finds striking wage variations among the young migrant population. Migrant workers who attended high schools in current receiving cities earned less than their counterparts who received senior-secondary education elsewhere. Students following the academic track were better off than students following the vocational track. To further explore what has prevented the urban labour market from rewarding migrants who studied in a receiving city, where the education system is expected to better cater to the city’s specific industrial needs, we tested and found evidence of the mediating effects of job industry and occupation. In addition to engaging with empirical debates in the field, this paper develops a theoretical framework to model how the qualitative attributes of an education system affect wage variations among migrant workers.

The linkage between innovation and labour market performance: some empirical evidence from the Nordic region

It is common knowledge that innovations are the drivers of economic growth. However, the direct relationship between innovation and socio-economic performance is questionable. In the article, we examine the linkage between innovation performance, measured by the Summary innovation index, and labour market indicators in Nordic countries, being the leaders of innovation performance and welfare states at the same time. The study shows that employment is growing among people with higher education with the improvement of innovation performance. At the same time, there is a large share of unemployed among low-skilled workers, which also tends to grow. The causality test analysis between Summary Innovation Index and labour statistics by Granger test for panel data does not reveal the causal relationships.

The Geography of Job Creation and Job Destruction

Spatial differences in labor market performance are large and highly persistent. Using data from the United States, Germany, and the United Kingdom, we document striking similarities in spatial differences in unemployment, vacancies, job finding, and job filling within each country. This robust set of facts guides and disciplines the development of a theory of local labor market performance. We find that a spatial version of a Diamond-Mortensen-Pissarides model with endogenous separations and on-the-job search quantitatively accounts for all the documented empirical regularities. The model also quantitatively rationalizes why differences in job-separation rates have primary importance in inducing differences in unemployment across space while changes in the job-finding rate are the main driver in unemployment fluctuations over the business cycle.

Are Temporary Jobs Stepping Stones or Dead Ends? A Meta-Analytical Review of the Literature

We present a meta-analysis on the debate about the stone vs. dead end' hypothesis related to the causal effect of temporary jobs on future labour market performances. We select academic papers published on international peer-reviewed journals from 1990 until 2021. Among 78 observations from 64 articles, 32% support the hypothesis according to which temporary contracts are a port of entry into stable employment positions, 23% report ambiguous or mixed findings, and the remaining 45% provide evidence in favour of the dead end hypothesis. The results from meta-regressions suggest that the stepping stone effect is more likely to emerge when self-selectivity issues are dealt with, especially when using the timing-of-events approach. The studies focusing on temporary work agency jobs and casual/seasonal jobs detect more easily results in favour of the dead end hypothesis. Finally, in more recent years and when the unemployment rate is larger, the dead end hypothesis is more likely to prevail.

Youth employment and unemployment rates in Kosovo

The main aim of this study is to analyse the employment and unemployment rates in the Western Balkans, looking particularly at youth (aged 18–24 years) unemployment in Kosovo. The results of the study show that unemployment in this age group is high and that labour market policies are also not appropriate. The empirical study was conducted during the pandemic (2020), but statistics for study needs were used from the period 2001–2019. It involved young people aged 18–24 and used data from various local and international institutions regarding the labour market for young people, labour market policy, etc. The study shows that in Kosovo, 48.7% of young people aged 18–24 are unemployed and that the most pronounced unemployment is among women. A significant proportion of the young population is unemployed (46.4%) and youth unemployment among females is higher (53.6%) compared to males (42.9%) (Kosovo Agency of Statistics, 2020b). Kosovo’s problem with youth unemployment is the result of poor economic development as well as inefficient labour market policies. The study recommends that policymakers develop sustainable and effective policies that will lead to stability in youth employment and improve the labour market performance. These policies should help organizations and businesses to increase the number of employees, but should also create long-term employment stability. Furthermore, a critical appraisal is necessary to avoid youth unemployment, instability in youth employment and labour market instability as a whole

Do Conditional Cash Transfers Improve Education and Labour Market Outcomes in the Future Generation?

This paper estimates the long-term impacts of PROGRESA, the Mexican conditional cash transfer programme, on the educational attainment and the labour market performance of children aged 18 years or younger in 1997. Based on the household panel in 1997-2017, we utilise the initial experimental design where the programmes were allocated randomly at the village level in a phased manner. After controlling for the attrition bias by Inverse Probability Weights and the unobservable time-invariant household characteristics, we estimate the intent to treat (ITT) effect by Propensity Score Matching and weighted OLS and Probit models. After 20 years, children of the poor eligible households in the early treated villages outperformed the matched children in the control villages. Regardless of age groups and gender, early beneficiaries achieved better educational attainments in both durations and levels and were more likely to work and earn a higher salary in the regular and non-regular labour markets. We also find spillover effects on children of non-poor households in the treated villages for education but not for employment. The study provides robust evidence to support Heckman's (2012) conclusion that the education of disadvantaged children should be prioritised by public policies not only for the sake of fairness and social justice but also for the productivity of the economy.

Diverging Labour-Market Trajectories of Australian Graduates from Advantaged and Disadvantaged Social Backgrounds: A Longitudinal Analysis of Population-Wide Linked Administrative Data

Despite mounting evidence that university participation enhances labour-market prospects, there are growing concerns about unequal returns to university for graduates from advantaged and disadvantaged social backgrounds. The available evidence-base, however, suffers from significant shortcomings that challenge the validity of these findings—including small sample sizes, cross-sectional designs, and self-reported measures of labour-market performance. In this study, we overcome these methodological limitations by leveraging large-scale linked administrative data covering the full population of individuals graduating from Australian universities over the 2005-2011 period (n=3,107,085 annual observations and 565,318 graduates). Capitalising on this unique and powerful dataset, we examine differences in the labour-market trajectories of graduates from multiple social backgrounds (based on socio-economic status, ethnicity, migration, location, and disability) over a 10-year observation window. We track both their employment earnings and the amount of unemployment benefits that they received. Our findings reveal higher returns to university education over the first 10 years post-graduation amongst graduates from advantaged social backgrounds compared to their peers from more disadvantaged social backgrounds. However, there was substantial heterogeneity in graduates’ earnings and unemployment-benefit receipt both across groups and over time. Of the five groups considered, graduates with a disability and from non-English speaking backgrounds experienced the worst outcomes, whereas graduates from low socio-economic status backgrounds and regional, rural and remote areas fared comparatively well. Indigenous graduates experienced inconsistent outcomes that changed markedly with time since graduation. These findings bear important implications for policy and practice in relation to both higher education and the labour market.

THE IMPACTS OF DIFFERENT TYPES OF COLLEGE INSTRUCTORS ON STUDENTS’ ACADEMIC AND LABOR MARKET OUTCOMES

AbstractBased on a novel data set that links college administrative information with earnings records from a state college system for both public two‐year and four‐year colleges, this study quantifies the impacts of exposure to different types of instructors during students’ initial semester in college on their subsequent academic and labor market outcomes. To minimize bias from student sorting by type of instructor, we combine course‐set fixed effects with an instrumental variables approach that exploits term‐by‐term fluctuations in faculty composition in each department, therefore controlling for both between‐ and within‐course sorting. The findings suggest that two‐year students, particularly racial minority students, have substantially higher levels of exposure to adjuncts with temporary appointments than four‐year students. Two‐year students taking a heavy course schedule with temporary adjuncts are adversely affected in college persistence and subsequent credit accumulation, and the penalty is particularly pronounced among males and racial minority students with stronger academic potential. Such negative impacts on academic outcomes do not translate into poorer short‐ to medium‐term labor market performance. In the four‐year setting, no significant distinction is identified between different types of instructors on either student academic or labor market outcomes.

Sibling Rivalry: Evidence from China’s Compulsory Schooling Reform

Abstract This study investigates the causal effect of older siblings’ schooling on their younger siblings’ schooling and labor market outcomes by exploiting the temporal and geographical variations in the implementation of compulsory schooling laws in China. Reform exposure is quantified as the number of years that an individual is eligible for compulsory education. We find that older siblings’ exposure to compulsory schooling reform had negative impacts on their younger siblings’ academic achievement and labor market performance. We provide some suggestive evidence for the mechanism of resource reallocation within households. These findings suggest that we may be overestimating the social benefits of compulsory schooling reforms by ignoring the resources constraints within households and the spillover effects on siblings.

Does the Early Bird Catch the Worm? Evidence and Interpretation on the Long-Term Impact of School Entry Age in China

The long-term economic impact of children's age at primary school entry on educational attainment and labor market outcomes is one of the primary concerns to families, educators, and policymakers. Using a nationally representative survey of families and individuals, this paper is the first to explore these effects in a causal sense in the Chinese context and understand the underlying mechanisms. We use a regression discontinuity (RD) design that employs the threshold date for primary school entry set by the 1986 Compulsory Education Law of China as a source of exogenous variation in the timing of school entry. We first document a salient and robust compliance rate of school entry requirement. RD estimates indicate that being born right after the cutoff date significantly increases years of schooling and log annual earnings for non-agricultural jobs for the full sample. We also observe remarkable heterogeneous effects on labor market performance by gender. Being born right after the cutoff increases the probability of being in the labor force for men, but decreases that for women. Further evidence suggests that the decline in the female labor force participation can be explained by supply-side factors including fertility decision and childcare provision.

대학 재학 중 휴학과 노동시장 성과

대학 재학 중 휴학과 노동시장 성과

Gender gaps in skills and labor market outcomes: evidence from the PIAAC

Our paper makes the first attempt to address the empirical relationRicship between cognitive skills and gender gaps in labor market performance. We do so in a cross-country setting. To that end we use the PIAAC dataset, which contains information on OECD and non-OECD economies. Firstly, we document the existence of gender gaps in cognitive skills for numeracy, which are found to be around 2.5–4.6% and increase with age. These gaps remain even when comparing men and women within the same level and field of study. Next, we document sizable gender gaps in labor market outcomes, such as Labor Force Participation and hourly wages—around 18%, increase with age and rise remarkably for parents. Math skills are positively and strongly associated with these two labor market outcomes and its contribution to explain gender gaps, although significant, is limited—between 10 15% at most—in particular for parents.

The distributional impacts of the reduction in remittances in Central America in COVID-19 times

COVID-19 has generated several quarantines and economic lockdowns as the main public policy responses that dramatically affected the dynamic of economic growth and labor markets worldwide. These effects impact remittance inflows to developing countries, in particular those coming from the US, which affect poverty reduction paths in Latin America. Using data from the US labor market and economic performance indicators of the US and remittance recipient countries, this paper estimates the distributional impacts of the change in remittances post-COVID-19 for the region that most rely on remittances, Central America. Results suggest that after COVID-19, remittance inflows are expected to decrease 14 % in the region during 2020 and that effects are heterogeneous among countries: El Salvador and Nicaragua are expected to be the most affected countries while Panama is expected to be the least affected one. The model allows to estimate impacts in other countries in Latin America and the Caribbean. However, due to the lack of household survey availability, this paper only explores the distributional impacts of the change in remittance inflows in Central America. The expected impacts on poverty are also heterogeneous. While poverty in El Salvador is expected to increase by 6 % due to the change in remittances, poverty in Guatemala is expected to increase by 1 %. Results are robust to different specifications.

How do extremely high temperatures affect labor market performance? Evidence from rural China

To improve understanding of the labor market implications of climate change, this paper investigates how heat extremes affect individual-level labor market outcomes in rural China. By exploiting daily weather and household survey data during the period 1989–2011, we find that extremely high temperatures significantly reduce rural laborers’ working hours and wages but have no statistically significant effect on their employment status. In addition, the adverse effects of extremely high temperatures on the service sector and on female workers could be long-lasting. To attenuate the detrimental effects of temperature shocks, rural laborers may perform adjustment behaviors to reduce direct exposure to high-temperature working environments, including leaving agricultural primary occupations and engaging in non-agricultural secondary occupations.

Socio-economic inequality and academic match among post-compulsory education participants

The paper investigates socio-economic gaps in the match between student quality and upper-secondary qualification quality using detailed individual-level linked administrative data from schools, colleges and tax authorities in England. Academic match is identified using a continuous measure defining undermatched, matched and overmatched students based on the distance between each student’s attainment in age 16 high-stake examinations and the median attainment of students who achieved a similar academic or vocational qualification. Students from socially disadvantaged backgrounds are found to be more likely to be exposed to academic undermatch compared to their more advantaged peers and this effect is greater among the highest achieving students. The paper demonstrates that among the highest achieving students, 20% of the identified socio-economic gap in academic match can be explained by geographic differences, such as district deprivation and local Further Education opportunities. Further, the dominant 60% of the gap can be explained by differences in the school composition that students from differing backgrounds attend, such as the proportion of high achieving students and the proportion of disadvantaged students. Finally, although the effect of academic match in upper-secondary education on important individual outcomes, including university participation and labour market performance, in terms of earnings and employment probabilities at age 25, is imprecise, there are clear indications about the detrimental effect of academic undermatch on all these outcomes.

New member state workers in Western European labour markets. Are they civically stratified?

ABSTRACT This study applies the theory of civic stratification to analyse how the integration of EU-10 and EU-3 immigrants into the labour markets of six European countries – France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom – has evolved between 2005 and 2016. Special attention is paid to the effect of the moratoria on the free movement of workers, which lasted between 0 and 7 years. Data from the EU-LFS is used in two mixed effects logistic regression models for each country, using the following dependent variables: having employment and if that employment matches the qualifications of the worker. The interaction between nationality (own-country, EU-10, EU-3 and EU-15) and whether or not a moratoria exists is used to compare the level of labour integration of the EU-10 and EU-3 groups with that of national populations and EU-15 immigrants. Our results show that during the moratoria EU-10 and EU-3 immigrants have had a much lower labour market performance than people with full European citizenship. This gap has decreased drastically, without disappearing in many cases, after the moratoria ended.